Source: forbes.com
“Complete prohibition of all chemical mind changers can be decreed, but cannot be enforced, and tends to create more evils than it cures.”– Aldous Huxley
The marijuana movement is “finally prevailing” in the United States of the Greedy and Sleazy, according to Hustler founder Larry Flynt. In his latest publisher’s statement for the magazine’s 44th Anniversary Spectacular, the 75-year-old First Amendment defender discusses the progress the country is now making in the realm of federal pot reform now that more states are moving to disregard Uncle Sam’s cutthroat manure maneuvers and legalize the leaf for medicinal and recreational purposes.
Flynt, who began publishing his controversial publication back in 1974, points to recent changes in the black hearts of long time anti-pot politicians Senate Republican Mitch McConnell and former Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner as evidence that the gray hairs on Capitol Hill are starting to catch a whiff of the barrels of cash that stand to be made by going fully legal.
“This may sound like a joke,” Flynt wrote, before explaining that the slump in the tobacco market, as well as pressure from his farmer constituents in Kentucky has McConnell pushing to release industrial hemp from its prohibitionary cage. The Senate Majority Leader is behind a bill designed to permanently remove hemp from the DEA’s Controlled Substances Act. But don't get too excited -- hemp is as far is he is willing to go. McConnell, who was once pegged to be the real Keyser Söze for his family connection to a cocaine transport ship, refuses to back any legislative offering that pertains to marijuana. He recently told reporters that hemp "is a different plant. It has an illicit cousin which I choose not to embrace.”
If McConnell gets his way, something that is distinctly possible as long as the House of Representatives doesn’t start bucking on the issue, the non-intoxicating hemp plant, which was lumped in with marijuana back when Congress passed the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, would once again become a vital part of American commerce. Several states and Canada already allow it.
“Industrial hemp is the single most versatile plant on Earth, used for everything from clothing, paper, fiberboard, insulation, fuel and food to toxic cleanup,” Flynt declared in his piece called A Hemp Revival Is On The Horizon. “Hemp requires considerably less water than cotton and virtually no toxic herbicides and pesticides.”
But then Flynt takes off the gloves.
“How this most beneficial crop was outlawed in the 1930s – by collusion between Republican Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, Bureau of Narcotics chief Harry Anslinger and the petrochemical and timber interests who feared hemp as a competitive product – is an object lesson on government corruption by big business,” he wrote. “Forget all of the antigovernment rhetoric by corporate interests – they love Uncle Sam when he can be arm-twisted into stifling competition.”
Perhaps more shocking than McConnell’s newfound lust to give industrial hemp and its billion dollar market potential back to the U.S. farming community, Flynt riffed, is news that John Boehner has joined the Board of Advisors for a multi-state cannabis firm called Acreage Holdings.
The former alcoholic-eyed gatekeeper of the U.S. House of Representatives, who had every chance during the Obama administration to get behind a bill aimed at ending federal marijuana prohibition -- but didn’t -- is now lobbying on behalf of pot in hopes of persuading the governmental grind to tax and regulate it in a manner similar to alcohol and tobacco. This shift, according to Flynt, has more to do with him wanting to get fatter off the land, now that he has nothing left to lose in Washington.
“Well, better late than never,” Flynt wrote, pointing out that Boehner has said in the past that he is “unalterably opposed” to marijuana legalization.
“Why is he jumping the bandwagon now? Because it’s safer to do so now that several states have legalized both medicinal and recreational marijuana,” Flynt wrote, with his metaphorical middle finger firmly raised. “Conservative are always two steps behind on any kind of forward-thinking progress,” he added. “And perhaps the most important reason: McConnell and Boehner are simply adhering to what should be the real motto of the GOP, money talks.”
Flynt mentions the Marijuana Justice Act when discussing how liberals are working to pass “more significant and far-reaching” legislation. This particular bill, which was introduced last year by Senator Cory Booker and has since garnered the support of Senators Bernie Sanders and Kristen Gillibrand, not only intends to legalize marijuana nationwide, eliminating the herb from the confines of the Controlled Substances Act, but it would also penalize states for maintaining a prohibitionary standard and even work to expunge pot-related convictions. The implications behind the proposal seem to give Flynt some hope that the backbiting reign of idiocy in America is about to suffer a miserable, painful death at the hands of common sense.
“After nearly a century of corrupt and vicious cannabis policies than have damaged our environment and industry while ruining people’s lives, it appears that sanity, at long last, is finally prevailing,” Flynt concluded his statement.
Unfortunately, while the liberals may have the best of intentions, their actions are going mostly unrecognized and unsung on the Hill.
As Forbes reported earlier this week, all of the bills seeking to legalize marijuana at the national level, in some form or fashion, do not appear to have enough backing to make it out of Congress alive. This realization is especially tragic considering that President Donald Trump -- a man for which Flynt has put up a $10 million reward for anyone providing him with enough dirt to lead to his impeachment -- has said that he would “probably” sign the bill (STATES Act) if it happens to land on his desk. “We’re looking at it,” he told reporters ahead of the G-7 summit. “But I probably will end up supporting that, yes.”
So, while the marijuana issue might be prevailing in America, it is far from over. There is still plenty of work to be done, perhaps with a wet rubber hose, some rusty nipple clamps and enough guts to stop settling for baby steps, before the U.S government finally gives in.
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